Antibiotic resistance has raced quickly up the list of (non-religious) apocalyptic scenarios over the past few months, as warnings from the CDC, Britain's chief medical officer, and beyond were sounded alongside ever more images of hospital room decontaminations, electron microscope-rendered MSRA, and, over this past week, cows. A study last week identified a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that's successfully been transmitted from our bovine friends to people. Add this to a race that we already appear to be losing, as bacteria evolves into drug-resistance forms faster than we develop new antibiotics, and we have a bad scene. Also, please note that a bacterial infection is a terrible way to go, way worse than a North Korean nuke.It got a bit buried in the news cycle, but last week actually brought a bit of good news about the resistance race as well. A paper in Wednesday's issue of Nature (via the Nature news blog) outlined research successfully mapping for the first the protein that leads to antibiotic resistance. It's one of a class known as "multidrug and toxic compound extrusion transporters" (MATEs) that reside within cell membranes. A mate is a little "V" shaped thing whose job, usually, is to push toxins out of cells but, in the case of some antibiotics and cancer drugs, also can shove out helpful things as well.What's more, the researchers discovered a peptide that blocks the activity of the particular MATE studied. So, if you could combine a drug that chills the MATEs out with a usually ineffective antibiotic, it may be possible to get around the resistance and kill off the bacteria. It's an exciting possibility that, while not substituting for new lines of antibiotics and new ways of thinking about how and how often antibiotics are administered, MATE inhibitors could be another weapon against one particularly brutal doomsday.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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